More than dog whistles

28th September 2020   ·   0 Comments

By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Columnist

We know what this is.

I’m the least racist person you know,” Trump said while campaigning in 2016. He lied.

Michael Cohen, his former attorney and fixer boldly declared, “”Donald Trump is just an outright racist,” in an interview with the Reverend Al Sharpton. Cohen added that Trump “despises Black women because he doesn’t know how to handle them.”

Mary L. Trump, his niece, confirmed that her uncle is indeed a racist and that she heard him use the “N” word many times. Mary Trump’s book “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” is a best-seller.

However, Trump’s own words and deeds prove that he is a racist. He is, after all, a product of a racist upbringing. When you consider that Fred Trump, Donald’s father, was arrested at a KKK rally in 1927 and that Trump grew up during legal segregation, and he and his father were sued for housing discrimination, it is evident that at 74 years old, he is the racist he was reared to be.

Trump has assembled a long record of comment on issues involving African Americans as well as Mexicans, Hispanics more broadly, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, women, and people with disabilities.

Trump exhibited his racial animosity even before the 2016 campaign. After grabbing headlines as the leader of the debunked conspiracy that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., Trump garnered the support of 35 to 40 percent of white voters by saying Mexican immigrants are “rapists,” drug dealers, and criminals.

Then there was the full-page ad private citizen Trump took out encouraging the death penalty for the exonerated five, Black teens who were accused of raping and killing a Central Park jogger. Even after they were exonerated by DNA results, Trump stood by his action in 2016.

After the election, Trump attacked American-born Judge Gonzalo Curiel who presided over the Trump University class-action lawsuits. Calling the judge, a “Mexican,” he said Curiel was biased against him, and he also said that a Muslim judge might also be incapable of hearing a lawsuit involving any Trump entity.

Muslims have been in the pit of Trump’s racial attacks since the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, when Trump released a statement on “Preventing Muslim Immigration” and called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”

In 2016, Trump took a run at implementing a “Muslim Ban,” but he was defeated in the courts. He got Rudy Giuliani to tweak the ban to apply to nations in geographic areas and got a ban put on Muslims in a legal sleight of hand move.

Black people are used to Trump talking out of both sides of his neck. One minute he’s saying, “I love Black people,” and the next he’s berating Black leaders and calling Black Lives Matter Murals a “symbol of hate.”

Trump has regularly retweeted false statistics claiming that African Americans are responsible for the majority of murders of white Americans, and in speeches he has repeatedly linked Black Americans with violent crime. Yet, the FBI report declaring white supremacy groups to be the biggest domestic terrorism threat facing this nation seems to have fallen on Trump’s deaf ears.

But let’s get one thing straight about racism: People have a right to be racist but when they act on racial ideations, they become dangerous. Clearly, Trump’s race-baiting diatribes are encouraging violent acts against peaceful protesters.

While Trump characterizes Black Lives Matters protesters as “angry mobs” of Antifa members, his white supremacists supporters are out there killing people. It’s clear that his supporters are the ones infiltrating peaceful Black Lives Matter protests, setting fires, and damaging properties.

During the early days of the George Floyd protests marches, the Minneapolis police say the ‘Umbrella Man,’ who was videoed smashing windows, was a white supremacist trying to incite a riot. Police also connected the 32-year-old man to an incident in Stillwater, in which a Muslim woman was confronted by men wearing white supremacist garb.

A subsequent investigation revealed the man was also an associate of the Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood, a small white supremacist prison and street gang based primarily in Minnesota and Kentucky.

Also, “a leaked memo suggested that bikers “associated with white racially motivated violent extremists” had discussed inciting riots while posing as members of the anti-fascist group Antifa,” according to an article in the Star-Tribune.

Then in June 2020, the FBI reported that Steven Carrillo and Robert Justus ‘came to Oakland to kill cops.’ Bullet holes are still visible at the Oakland Federal Building guard post, where security officer Pat Underwood lost his life and his partner was seriously injured on May 29. Carrillo, an active duty Air Force police officer from Travis Air Force Base who was also charged with killing a Santa Cruz Co. sheriff’s deputy, used “his own blood” to write phrases associated with the Boogaloo movement in one of the cars he allegedly carjacked.

Then there was Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two peaceful protesters and injured another in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse is suspected of affiliating with white militia groups. Trump defended Rittenhouse by saying, without evidence, that the 17-year-old “Blue Lives” activist shot in self-defense.

A week prior to the Grand Jury decision in Kentucky, when asked what he thought about white supremacists supporting him, Trump replied, “Is that supposed to be a bad thing?”

At a rally last week near Pittsburg, Trump verbally attacked Somali-born U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar again, saying, “She is telling us how to run our country. How did you do where you came from? How is your country doing?” Omar, an American citizen said, ““Firstly, this is my country & I am a member of the House that impeached you. “Secondly, I fled civil war when I was 8. An 8-year-old doesn’t run a country even though you run our country like one.” In the past, Trump suggested she go back where she came from.

So, what is behind Trump’s words and actions? Could it be the browning of America?

This article originally published in the September 28, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.